


Draw From The Well and Escape

by byzantienne



Series: In Nomine: the Company [3]
Category: In Nomine
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-23
Updated: 2014-05-23
Packaged: 2018-01-26 07:02:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1679072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/byzantienne/pseuds/byzantienne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Chaixin and Daosheng, having spent some time successfully on the corporeal, happen upon the idea of the company, and explain it to one another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Draw From The Well and Escape

> The east wind sighs, the fine rains come:  
>  Beyond the pool of water-lilies, the noise of faint thunder.  
>  A gold toad gnaws the lock. Open it, burn the incense.  
>  A tiger of jade pulls the rope. Draw from the well and escape.  
>  Chia's daughter peeped through the screen when Han the clerk was young,  
>  The goddess of the River left her pillow for the great Prince of Wei.  
>  Never let your heart open with the spring flowers:  
>  One inch of love is an inch of ashes.
> 
> \-- "Untitled Poem II", Li Shangyin

They'd stashed Yuliang in the back room of a fan-tan parlor in Canton. Daosheng walked her in and settled her in the middle of the sacks of smuggled coffee and cinnamon and dried poppies, knelt down with her while Chaixin watched the door for them. Just because the parlor was a safehouse didn't mean it was _safe_ , even if she and Daosheng were betting on it being one that the Knight they'd stolen Yuliang from didn't know about.

Daosheng had held onto Yuliang's hands, pressed them between her palms, and kissed her forehead. Said, "You stay right here. Forty-eight hours. We'll take care of everything and swing back to pick you up once it's all done. I promise." And when Yuliang had – not even flinched, just widened her eyes like she was approaching something she'd flinch back from, Daosheng had smiled, quicksilver and sharp, and said, "You do not have to believe me," and Yuliang laughed, all shock.

Which was the best either of them had gotten out of her since they'd actually swiped her from the Balseraph she'd been serving. Chaixin had felt sharply, brightly satisfied: Daosheng would know the right thing to say. She always did. And when Chaixin herself had added, "Play some fan-tan if you want. Talk to the Djinn at the bar if you get into trouble, or you're worried. He's not one of ours but he'll know how to reach us," Daosheng had set Yuliang enough at ease that she listened, and she nodded, and she was so smart and so clever and had asked to be stolen and it had _worked_. And what was left was leading her former boss on a nasty chase through the countryside and into a trap, and since when could two Calabim with fast horses and faster money not take down one Balseraph?

Even if he was a Knight.

* * *

Chaixin made sure it was a good plan. A hard-hitting, fast plan that was half con artistry and half brazen manipulation, with a filigree of selling the Knight back his own stolen property and then exposing him to the Imperial Police at the border between Guangdong Province and Fujian. Steal his money, steal his property, steal his reputation: steal his whole Role away from him. Like they'd stolen his favorite Impudite.

It would only have been politically risky if they _hadn't_ pulled it off, and Chaixin wasn't about to let one Knight get in the way of something Daosheng wanted as much as she'd wanted to steal Yuliang.

Now, alone in an ambassadorial hotel in the city halfway between the provincial border and where they'd left their prize, paid for with the contents of that Balseraph's purse, Daosheng said, "Have we ever stolen a whole person before?" She was standing framed in the moon gate leading into the inner courtyard, looking out at the single pear tree in its small garden. She hadn't even taken off her boots, and when Chaixin came up behind her she smelled of the sweat of the horses they'd both ridden to exhaustion.

"Not a whole person," Chaixin said, folding her hands around Daosheng's waist. Her vessel was straight from shoulder to hip, leanly muscled. Dressed as she was now, in long embroidered coat and trousers, she could pass as a boy to anyone who didn't have their palms curved over the flare of her hips. When Chaixin pulled her back against her, she twisted, tilted her head to rub against Chaixin's collarbone and got a hand wrapped in the long queue Chaixin'd braided into her hair. Chaixin breathed out through her teeth. "Parts of a person," she added, as dryly as she could. "Titles. That time with the severed hand."

"Hearts," Daosheng added cheerfully. She was flushed across the cheeks and half of her hair had come undone. Five hours fast riding and an entropy field. Chaixin imagined she looked as undone herself, if not worse. If they had any reason to leave this room before dawn, she'd offer to replait all those dark strands stuck sweatily to the nape of Daosheng's neck. They didn't have any such reason. 

"You certainly stole Yuliang's," Chaixin said.

"It's only fair of us to steal the rest of her, then. She'd pine, if we ran off with just her heart."

Chaixin spun her so they were standing hip to hip, pressed together. Daosheng let off her queue and stretched her palm flat between Chaixin's shoulderblades, and Chaxin felt abruptly as if she was the one being encompassed and held still, despite having four inches of height at least on Daosheng. She looked up at her evenly from under impossible eyelashes. She could have been an Impudite, for how difficult it was to look away from her.

"Are we keeping her, then," Chaixin asked.

Daosheng made a considering noise. "We'd do a better job of it than that Knight was doing," she said. 

"That's an exceptionally low bar, Daosheng. She hardly coheres without being puppetted by resonance."

"She was getting better even by the time we got her to the safehouse," Daosheng said. She shifted her weight, slipped closer, her upper thigh exerting backwards, upwards pressure between Chaixin's legs. Chaixin let her eyes flutter closed and breathed, two breaths, inhale and exhale with a catch, before allowing that pressure to push her into stepping back, walking blind under Daosheng's direction towards the futon in the inner room. 

"Don't forget," Daosheng said, just as Chaixin's calves touched the edge of the mattress, " _she_ asked us to run off with her."

"It does suggest that she has some volition under all of that," Chaixin agreed, "and also you're trying to distract me." She hooked an ankle around the back of Daosheng's knee and hung onto her hips while she yanked them both off-balance, a scramble of falling elbows and thighs tumbling onto the futon. Chaixin had the advantage of surprise and twenty pounds of weight and got Daosheng under her, pinned like an unruly wind-tossed flag, squirming.

"And you're _not_?" she said indignantly, leaned up on her elbows, and bit Chaixin's lower lip. It stung. Chaixin wrapped her hand around the back of Daosheng's head and held her in place, _almost_ being kissed. Her breath was hot and sweet, light rapid pants against Chaixin's mouth.

"Of course I am," she said. "What are we going to do with an Impudite of our own?"

Not dreamily at all, Daosheng said, "Steal a lot more hearts. Three-man cons. Always having someone to keep track of where we've left humans last."

Chaixin thought about it: a clever person, gregarious and pretty and smart enough to want to steal herself, or at least let herself be stolen, always available and ready to do whatever Chaixin and Daosheng needed her to do. Not a friend, exactly -- she only had one friend, and that friend had turned her head and was sucking kisses onto the inside of her wrist, over the pulse, scraping with her teeth -- but not like some subordinate gang-member, either. They'd had those before. They weren't interesting. They didn't stay.

"If she was ours," she said, shifting on the futon to interweave her thighs with Daosheng's, "really ours --"

"Like a hunting hawk," Daosheng said. Her mouth moved on the skin of Chaixin's wrist and Chaixin wanted to squirm, to shove her down harder on the mattress and bite her throat and her shoulders and make her rock up against her. "Not tame, just ours. She'd bring us back what she'd caught and we'd tell her how well she'd done."

"An extension of your hands," Chaixin said. 

"Yours too," said Daosheng, and kissed her, sharp and quick and hard. She could be like fire, when she was like this: like a scorching light that burned and left slick raw skin behind her. The wet of her mouth, on Chaixin's. All her nerves alight.

Chaxin kissed her down onto the futon, flung her hands up over her head and held her there by the wrists until she was twisting back and forth, long shudders under Chaixin's weight that each ended in dragging the fork of her legs up over Chaixin's hipbone, insistent and hot even through her trousers and Chaixin's coat. Her fingers spread and tore at the pillows. Chaixin twisted her hip, pressed a tight grinding circle down into that heat at the center of Daosheng, felt the bone of her pelvic arch stutter upward, seeking, until she made a choked and helpless noise and the pillows went to resonated shreds under her hands. They were going to wreck the room. Chaixin wanted to. Wanted to take it all apart because they _could_.

Daosheng shoved her up with her wrists, far stronger than the vessel looked, strong enough to push Chaixin to kneeling and then to swarm into her lap, legs spread over her legs and her hips still rocking forward like she couldn't make herself keep still. Chaixin let her hands go to see what she'd do with them -- she tore open Chaixin's coat and shoved long rein-calloused fingers under her shirt, rough against the skin of her breasts. Caught at the nipples and _squeezed_ , and Chaixin whined through her teeth.

She got one hand between Daosheng's legs, high on her inner thigh where the silk of her trousers was crushed and damp with sweat from riding, and then higher, where it was _soaked_ through already. "Fuck," Chaixin breathed, almost shocked. "You want this. You want her, for us. Steal her and keep her and make her ours –"

"Let her steal herself, for wanting us," Daosheng said, all in a rush. "Like we stole ourselves for wanting each other. Like that. Come on, Chaixin, touch me –"

"I hardly need to, you're _dripping_ \--"

Daosheng flushed scarlet. Across the room, the painting over the writing-desk crashed to the floor, and Chaixin pressed her forehead into Daosheng's shoulder and bit at her tunic in order to not shove her hands inside her own trousers. 

"Touch me," Daosheng whispered, smugly intent, "or I'll do your clothes next and you'll have to pick up Yuliang naked."

"I'd steal someone else's," Chaixin said, with what little was left of her dignity, and to make Daosheng laugh. She twisted her wrist, pressed her thumb into the join of Daosheng's legs, pushing in through the fabric up to her first knuckle. Daosheng whined, one long syllable for _yes_ and another for _more_ , slipping from Mandarin to Helltongue. Chaixin dragged the sodden cloth up, imagined it was rough against all her swollen, hot flesh. Vessels were so elegant for this. They felt so much. Chaixin'd learned this one, knew what it liked, which was what Daosheng liked but through a filter. The throbbing pulse of the pearl at the apex of her, but under the cloth, for the particular sensation.

Daosheng's hands caught at where Chaixin's buttocks became her thighs, clutched at her and pulled her closer, held on while Chaixin stroked her off. She went _fast_ , an escalating shudder of tension, her hips jerking ruthlessly against Chaixin's hand until she arched and made a sharp, satisfied sound and went still. Chaixin could feel the flutter of the muscles inside her, even through her trousers.

After a moment Daosheng lifted her head from her shoulder, two fingers under Chaixin's chin. "Hell," she said, breathless. "I want to get my mouth on you _right now_ , Chaixin, _darling_ \--"

Half the sheets were fragments, scraps of cloth drifting. Half the sheets and one of the wall-hangings and a paper lamp and it was like whiteout, sometimes, when Chaixin just needed to break _something_ otherwise she'd come apart before Daosheng even did more than talk. Flashfires.

Daosheng shoved her sideways in the middle of it, got her leaning up against the futon's headboard and curled between her legs. Chaixin set a shaky hand in her hair. Daosheng worked her trousers down over her hips and off, and Chaixin spread her legs wide when she could, coaxing, her fingers wound up in the wisps of shorter hair at the base of Daosheng's skull.

Her tongue was an arrow-point, cool and slick against Chaixin's bare flesh, a bright and impossible shock of feeling that happened again and again as she licked at her, knowing and deliberate. Not a tease – she wouldn't tease, she hardly ever did – but a relentless pattern that made Chaixin want to squirm into her and away at the same time. She was making sharp helpless sounds with every breath, could hear herself make them, couldn't stop.

Between breaths she found enough air to say, "I want to watch you do this to Yuliang –"

Gratifyingly, Daosheng gasped against her and pressed her entire mouth in, tongue and lips and the edges of her teeth in broadening sweeps. Chaixin felt drowning-wet, dissolving. She arched up into her, flattened her hand against the back of her skull and held her there, held her _close_. "Yes – like that – watch her come apart for you, she's going to be so pretty, we'll take her to Stygia and see how she looks in her real skin and you can get your hands on her horns and your tongue inbetween her _Forces_ , fuck – !"

Daosheng had slipped two fingers inside her to the knuckle in one motion, sharp and clear pressure like a counterpoint.

"Please," Chaixin said without even meaning to, "more, Daosheng –"

Three. Spreading apart. Twisting. The heat of her suckling mouth. 

Like the inverse of pushing her resonance through the Discord at the core of her, a spiral inward and upward that never _stopped_ \--

After, when Chaixin could open her eyes again, Daosheng leaned her head on Chaixin's damp thigh and looked up at her with kiss-swollen lips and the same determined certainty that had been on her face at the beginning of every heist they'd ever pulled, even the first one, before they'd properly been demons. Chaixin reached down and pushed her hair off her forehead, smoothed it to a semblance of order.

"We will do it," Daosheng said. "She's ours already, it's just a matter of making it official and making it stick."

"We stole her, that's official enough for our Prince," Chaixin said. 

Daosheng caught at her wrist and pulled it down so that she could kiss the edges of Chaixin's nails, the tips of her fingers. "And we want her, so we'll make it stick. Fix her so she doesn't even _dream_ of having a Balseraph inside her head to tell her how to be."

"Mm. Us there, instead."

Daosheng smiled: brilliant, like the pear blossoms in the garden, and Chaixin sometimes thought she would have followed her to any Word, and made herself any sort of thing, for the sake of being looked at like that. "Us, and her," Daosheng said. "The her we'll help her be."

Chaixin nodded; it was settled now, decided and done. All that remained was execution, which was in some senses less important than the decision. "We ought to go get her, then," she said. "Before someone else steals her back."

"We can't have that, not with our reputation," said Daosheng, amused. "Dashing thieves and brigands, us." She sat up, turning to nestle between Chaixin's legs and lean back against her, and Chaixin set to fixing her hair properly.

"No one we steal is ever going to get away," Chaixin said, and meant it: _As if anyone would even want to._

"Of course not," Daosheng said. "We're Thieves."


End file.
